


rounding our last lap

by pissedofsandwich



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Anxiety, Except You Both Are Still in Love, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Break Up, inspired by the hiruga/hoshiumeme rp on twt!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:53:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26947756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pissedofsandwich/pseuds/pissedofsandwich
Summary: It's probably a bad idea to invite your ex over, even if it's to help you cook.
Relationships: Hirugami Sachirou/Hoshiumi Kourai
Comments: 5
Kudos: 86





	rounding our last lap

**Author's Note:**

> the hirugameme and hoshiumeme rp have gotten back together, but i am still posting this bcs at one point they were like, "we're exes who make out!" and i can't help but be inspired. thanks to them this fic exists! 
> 
> rated m is only for slight sex mention. there's no actual sex happening but there is some sad grinding. working music is last lap - abir, which incidentally is also where the title is derived from.
> 
> tw for panic attacks (though not described in great detail!)

This is how Shouko finds out he is gay:

On the cover of volleyball monthly, Nicholas Romero, nineteen years old, youngest Olympian competing in the World Championship. Pictured, a candid shot, his curly hair sweaty and plastered to his forehead while one hand pulls up one corner of his jersey to wipe at the sweat on his brow. His stomach ripples with sweat. He looks strong, dependable. His stats are insane.

Sachirou's fingerprints are all over the cover, the two-page spread of his official Brazilian national team picture, the tiny headshot at the corner of his op-ed where he is smiling wide, pearly white teeth and handsome. Her own, in comparison, are littered in the section where he talks about his exercise routine.

Sachirou, eleven years old, thinks he's so smart, sneaking into her room when she isn't back from practice to read the issue over and over again. Oh, he's so careful about it, always returns it perfect as if it hadn't been moved at all, but he's no criminal mastermind.

Shouko notices, obviously, and is way too kind to mention it until years later, when Sachirou finally confesses his crime at twenty-one years old, drunk off sake and having Kourai at his parents' wedding anniversary officially as his boyfriend. At his request, he is finally wearing something that isn't a athleisure, but a clean, white button-down that brings out the color of his eyes. Sachirou can map out his own fingerprints on Kourai's body through that layer of fabric, but that knowledge belongs to only him.

"Oh, I know," Shouko says. "I always knew those greasy fingerprints couldn't have belonged to Fukurou." 

The fact that she's so casual about it makes Sachirou's ears burn in embarrassment. He buries his face in his hands to the sound of Shouko's self-satisfied laughter and two gentle pats on his back. 

(He says gentle, but here's a gentle reminder that Shouko is a national team calibre spiker. He coughs in pain, but covers it up quickly with his fist. Shouko is not leveraging his strength over him, not when she already has so many embarrassing stories at her arsenal to last a lifetime.)

"I mean, seriously, Sachirou, it isn't like you were ever pretending to be straight. Remember that play date Mom set up for you in your third grade?"

"Oh, no," Sachirou says, burying his face deeper. "No. Please do not remind me of that, thank you—"

"You scared the poor girl!" Shouko continues, because it's an older sister's responsibility to torture younger brothers, especially when said younger brother was so uninterested in girls that he told Haruno Yuka from Class 3 to quit school because he didn't know how to get himself out of their date. His mother still couldn't look at the Harunos in the eyes, mortified for life. 

"Nee-chan, please stop," he whines.

Shouko laughs again, bringing more sake to her lips. In another corner of the room, Kourai is deep in a conversation with Fukurou—him standing up and Fukurou sitting down—unfortunately too occupied to save him from this humiliation, so Sachirou steals the glass from under Shouko's nose and downs it for himself. 

"Hey!"

"I seriously regret telling you," Sachirou laments. 

Shouko huffs, stealing back her drink and muttering something about him having enough under her breath. Sachirou disagrees. "I mean, really," Shouko says, "there's never really been anybody else for you, anyway. I don't know why you'd even try to keep it a secret from us. We know. We've always known. We were all just waiting for you to admit it to yourself."

Sachirou gapes. "You mean even Mom? And Dad?"

"Yeah?" Shouko says. "I don't know why this comes as such a surprise? Sachirou, you met Kourai in middle school and--" she brings her hands together, forceful like there's a force pulling at opposite charges, "like magnets, you know? It's always been Kourai-kun this, Kourai-kun that. We all suspected. And we all love you just the same."

Sachirou eyes the unopened soju bottle mournfully. "You're kidding me."

"It's not a bad thing, come on! Teenage angst and all that," Shouko pats his back once again, which—ow. "Everyone figures things out at their own pace. What's important is that you know who you are now, what you want to do, and we all love Kourai. Always have."

He feels warm again at the declaration, but instead of shame, this time, it's pride. Blooming like flower petals, soft against the beat of his heart. "Yeah," he echoes, "I—I'm glad you guys love him."

"And I'm glad he loves you," Shouko says. "He's really good for you."

"He is," Sachirou says, thinking of sunsets over the brick of their wall. His family knows about the burnout, but they don't know the real extent of the damage. If they know just what destructive path Kourai helped pull him out of—well, his mother's going to be demanding him to propose _yesterday,_ probably. He looks down at his lap. Life is not so bad, he thinks. 

Shouko bumps his shoulder. "You're smiling."

Sachirou startles. He hadn't realized.

"Happiness looks good on you, Sachirou," Shouko smiles. "I'm really happy that he makes you happy. Keep him close, yeah?"

And Sachirou, twenty one years old and drunk, so drunk, cannot see past the rose-tinted glasses. So buoyed by joy, he's convinced he cannot find a version of his future that doesn't have Kourai in it. He's giddy, stupid and naive. He is in love, devastatingly, so of course he just grins, wide and toothy. It's the ugly smile that's genuine. The one that Kourai loves so, so much. So of course he promises, "I will."

*

He is twenty-four years old now, and he's not registering a single thing being said in this movie. The thing is, he probably should, he's watched it so many times already with Kourai—Hoshiumi—that he probably can recite half of the lines verbatim, but that was when they were dating. That was before Kourai took a joke too far and hurt him, for real this time, and Sachirou decided to break the only promise he made to Shouko and terminated things, effective immediately.

(He hasn't talked to anyone about it. His brother somehow knows, and is respectfully leaving him no messages. He hopes he isn't giving Kourai—god fucking dammit, Sachirou, you useless gay, it's _Hoshiumi—_ shit for this. He'd hate to be the reason for infighting. Except he set the kitchen on fire again this morning trying to cook for himself, and—they promised to be friends, right? They _are_ friends. It shouldn't be weird that Kourai—fucking fuck, he gives up—offered him help, and that he accepted, because friends can cook together if they want to. It's a fun bonding experience.

But as all things in his life tended to be, it backfired, because it's raining cats and dogs outside and Kourai came here on foot, because he is earnest like that, and when Kourai suggested they wait out the rain while watching their favorite movie, Sachirou had once again been too useless to say no. So, once again, a doom of his own creation.)

He wishes he could put up a volleyball net between them. He wishes he could stop his hand from wandering too close to the no-man's-land that separates their bodies, he wishes Kourai would stop leaning too close to the right because he could feel his body heat now, seeping into his space, and he wishes he were strong enough to get himself off this couch, call a taxi, because it's not necessary for him to be here. 

He remembers Shouko once saying that as a principle, if the relationship ended badly, she doesn't stay friends with her ex-girlfriends. You get stuck in the cycle. Immovable, trapped in the same patterns. There was once a time where the thought of being stuck with Kourai would bring a smile to his face, but today he just fidgets, feeling like he's thirteen again and close to a burnout, to hurting himself.

No. But he won't get there. This is not like volleyball at all. He got into a relationship with Kourai because he loved him, not because he thought he had to—and oh, how he fucking loved this light of a man, fully with his entire soul and being. He's not--he's not _sick_ of Kourai, no, he never will be, he misses him right now and he's right there. He's right there. Why is he here? He shouldn't be, they've broken up for a reason, because Sachirou needs to move past whatever their relationship had been, save himself, find himself—so why is Kourai here? Why hasn't he kicked him out? He should. He really should, right?

"Sachirou, breathe."

His heart's in his throat. Wrong—his heart is outside of his body, in his living room, because he's given it away the second Kourai's lovely hands curled around his bloody knuckles, this boy possessing so much light his eyes burn with it. His heart is with Kourai, and Sachirou's blood is stuck somewhere in the confines of his gentle ribs, oxygen flow halted, maybe permanently broken. He doesn't know. All he knows is that if his heart is somewhere in his body, it shouldn't hurt this much.

The no-man's-land is breached, just like that, Kourai gaining centimeters when he pushes through the mental wall he's put between then to grasp at his cheeks, thumbs soft at the edge of his eyelids. "Sachirou," he says, because he still gets to say his name, it won't matter what he does, Sachirou's name is his, with the way he says it. Always with the edge of a question, like he's not the one who Sachirou looks to for answers. "Breathe with me. Breathe. Five in, five out—you remember, right? Come on."

He's pulling out breaths out of Sachirou's chest then, so close that his own puffs of breath are ghosting over his own face, his lips. He closes his eyes because breathing and looking at him at the same time is too much, too hard, but he feels another soft touch—Kourai's lips on his temple, reminiscent of those nights he startled from a nightmare, so sure he'd be pulled under that his breaths were ragged the second he woke, clutching at Kourai like a lifeline. He doesn't know why a touch so gentle hurts like a motherfucker. Maybe something in him is utterly broken.

"Like that, good," Kourai says.

Thunder strikes outside. He flinches on instinct, hands wrapping around Kourai's middle as the latter pulls him in closer, impossibly so. "You're safe, you're safe," Kourai promises, and it's devastating, how it still rings true, the way he does feel safe, calmer almost. Maybe it's his only excuse for kissing Kourai then, sweetly like he still has him—his body doesn't recognize it until later, when Kourai kisses back just as pretty, and he jerks, nearly pulling away—no, you're not supposed to kiss your ex, Hirugami Sachirou, get away—but Kourai licks at his lips, and he—he _gives_ in. Resolve shattered, he makes a broken noise at the back of his throat and opens his mouth, feeling dizzy at the touch of Kourai's tongue on his teeth, like he's taking stock of the last time he kissed Sachirou.

He feels himself harden inside his pants, and he can feel Kourai, too, and it's frantic, the way Kourai grinds down on his lap. He has no defense against the litany of moans that spill out of his mouth, muffled as they are by Kourai's own. He could come just like this if he lets it, he realizes, like they're back in high school and experimenting in the storage room, clumsy and terrible but loving, having fun—this feels like desperation. Like Kourai wants to make a point, wants to convince Sachirou of something. Kourai nips at his jaw, then his neck, his jutting collarbones, and Sachirou closes his eyes. Kourai's hands wander, under his ratty veterinarian school hoodie and between his legs, and Sachirou can't help but throws his head back. He's overwhelmed. He realizes he could really, _really_ come like this, and he gasps.

It's too much, it feels like Kourai has power of him, and god some nights it's all he wants, for Kourai to put all of his strength to good use, to haul him bodily and throw him on their— _their—_ bed because he knows Kourai likes it, when their size difference means nothing. When Sachirou's height is split in two as Kourai forces his body to fold—

 _(Kourai,_ he remembers himself begging, his knees on either side of his head, _please, please, I'm not as flexible as I used to be, please—_

 _I know you can,_ Kourai says, _I know you can, do it for me, baby, do it for me, I'm so close, yes, just like that—_

Sometimes Sachirou begs just to be denied. He loves it, then, this display of dominance, yielding himself because he knows Kourai will take care of him.)

But in the present, it's like sensory overload. He pushes against Kourai, and it's not gentle but it's not forceful, and Kourai freezes and lets go. They're both breathing hard. They don't—they just _kissed_ , Kourai is still on his lap and he looks so dazed and hurt, and Sachirou can't—he can't take this anymore. He wants to kiss him again. Wants to let him push against him so he melts into the couch and become only sensations, but. 

But the rain's stopped.

His chest is heaving. When he finds his voice, it's scratchy, breathy. "Hoshiumi," he remembers to call him, "I think—I think you can go home now."

Kourai blinks like he just remembered where he is. He swings his legs off Sachirou's lap. The lack of his weight leaves something in Sachirou feeling—bereft. Sachirou sees his Adam's apple as he swallow, reinstating the no-man's-land once again, a good head between them. The movie continues. No one can bring themselves to care anymore.

"Yeah, it's shiny outside," Kourai laughs wetly. "Finally."

It takes a while before he actually gets up—yeah, _something_ needs to come down first, Sachirou, his face burns at the thought. Sachirou almost doesn't walk him to the door, but that's rude, right? Whoever it is, a friend or an ex, you should always—watch them leave. At least until he gets to the elevator. 

"I—you don't have to walk me," Kourai says.

"Oh," Sachirou says. "Okay."

And that's how it goes, isn't it? They've arrived in this strange land of non-status, their history a deadweight on their backs instead of a foundation to make them stronger and they just—don't have enough fuel to make it back. Kourai leaves in a hurry, and Sachirou waits until the door's closed before he lets himself fall apart before the credits roll.

*

**do not text**

[21:46]

Sachirou

I think I left my jacket??

[22:00]

The brown one?

[22:01]

YES THAT ONE

[22:32]

How did you even leave it on  
the kitchen counter…

[22:34]

Must've forgotten it when I left

~~Idk maybe I want an excuse to come over (message unsent)~~

Can I come over Tuesday to pick it up?

[Seen at 22:56]

[00:12]

Sure.


End file.
